Case Number 02790

MAD LOVE (JUANA LA LOCA)

The Charge

"I want to be yours. I want to love you even if you loathe me." --
Joan the Mad

Opening Statement

Queen Joan of Spain, also known as Joan the Mad, is a fascinating historical
figure who's been the subject of an opera by Argentine composer Eduardo
Alonso-Crespo, and now this film by Spanish writer/director Vicente Aranda.
Juana la Loca in its Spanish release, someone in the States must have
decided the title was too Merchant-Ivory, changing it to the uninspired Mad
Love, a name already used for a mediocre Drew Barrymore and Chris O'Donnell
flick.

Names aside, the question is whether Aranda has successfully mined a
character with great dramatic potential. Let's proceed.

Facts of the Case

Joan of Castile (Pilar López de Ayala), the daughter of Queen Isabella
of Spain (you know, Christopher Columbus' benefactor), is set up in an arranged
marriage with Archduke Philip of Habsburg (Daniele Liotti). Sent to Austria to
wed, Joan knows she will likely never see her mother again, and the separation
is painful.

In Austria, Joan and Philip are instantly infatuated and marry without
ceremony so they can get down to consummating the union. Joan learns she likes
sex...a lot. Her love for Philip becomes consuming, obsessive, and she begins
bearing him children in rapid succession. Philip, meanwhile, takes on hobbies of
his own: infidelity and political power-grabs.

Joan discovers Philip's philandering on the same day she learns of her
mother's death, and amidst much histrionics becomes the eponymous Joan the Mad.
The couple returns to Spain so Joan can take her place as the country's ruler,
but Philip has other ideas. If he can have her tossed away as a nutjob, the
Spanish throne will be his.

The Evidence

Mad Love is a handsome film. The locations and sets are vast,
magnificent, and ornate, and the costumes are rich and detailed. Its
presentation of 16th century Austria and Spain is gritty and realistic and often
dirty; the world of the film looks lived-in. Paco Femenia's cinematography
benefits greatly from the precise detail of the production design; it's
straight-forward, earthy, unstylized, visually beautiful without being
technically self-indulgent. Overall, the DVD does right by his solid work. The
transfer is anamorphically enhanced at the film's theatrical aspect ratio of
2.35:1. Blacks are dense and rich with good shadow detail, important in a film
with many warm and dark, candlelit interiors. Colors are natural and perfectly
rendered. Edge enhancement is noticeable here and there, and there are isolated
patches in which the image appears slightly unstable, but these are minor
annoyances.

The audio is also impressive, a Dolby Digital 5.1 track in Castilian Spanish
with both English and French subtitles accessible via menu or remote. It's
robust for a costume drama, the score and sound effects spread throughout the
soundstage in surprisingly dynamic fashion. The track's a bit deceptive because
it's been mixed at a higher volume than most discs, giving the impression it's
got more punch than is really there. It's not nearly as subtle and dynamic as
the most impressive tracks out there, but it's plenty fine considering the
film's genre.

I wish I could say the substance of the film itself, the narrative, lives up
to the beauty and realism of its sights and sounds. It's shallow, juvenile. The
problem, rooted in Joan's motivations, is so fundamental it ruins the entire
film. Joan's love for Philip is entirely physical, sexual -- in a bookend to the
film's main narrative, an aged Joan (María Jesús Valdés) laments
her separation from Philip, saying she even misses the smell of his armpits; it
doesn't get much more physical than that. The young Joan and Philip have a
week-long marathon-of-sex honeymoon and that's it for Joan; she's his slave,
unable to recognize when he's walking all over her. There's even a hilariously
heavy-handed shot of López de Ayala in close-up, looking in wide-eyed awe
at Philip's manhood, the instrument of her degradation. It's as if the script
were written by frat boys.

Daniele Liotti, as Philip, doesn't help matters. Cast for the benefit of the
ladies, I'm sure, he has the dark and hunky look of a Harlequin Romance cover
boy, complete with Fabio-like long and wavy hair, and perpetual five o'clock
shadow. Casting Pamela Anderson Lee in the role of Joan would've made a better
match for him. To be fair, Liotti's performance isn't bad, but he's got no
substance to work with. Philip's looks and sexual prowess are the only things
that bind Joan to him. He's otherwise dull, demonstrating few signs of
intelligence or cunning. He comes off like a rich, spoiled cad, a manboy adept
at posing and preening but out of his depth when dealing with the substantive
challenges of politics and monarchical rule.

Based on some of the titles of his previous films (Lovers, Turkish
Passion, Jealousy), films I'll admit never having seen, director
Vicente Aranda appears to have a fascination with sex and erotic love, and
perhaps believed he was saying something profound about human sexuality here,
but he was dead wrong. The sad thing is so much of Joan's potential
psychological landscape is left unexplored in favor of simplistic, purely sexual
motivations. Here's a young girl from Spain, sent to Austria for an arranged
marriage that will strengthen her family's political influence, separated from
her mother and family, forced to live in a society with which she's unfamiliar
after having lived a life of privilege in Spain. There are so many compelling
reasons Joan could have an unhealthy connection to Philip, her husband, an
island of stability and familiarity in a world in which she feels an outsider.
Aranda ignores such pesky complexity and crassly reduces it all to genitals and
orgasms.

What a disappointment.

On the acting front, Pilar López de Ayala delivers a good performance
in the vein of Vivian Leigh in Gone With the Wind, weeping and raging and
generally chewing scenery. Granted we're a long way from 1939, and modern
sensibilities generally find those sorts of histrionics laughable, but in this
case it's an island of fun in an otherwise painful experience. Besides, what
else should the actress have done given the role of a woman driven mad by a
chiseled chin, rock-hard abs, and a deftly wielded penis? I'm not going to
second guess her. And, anyway, her screeching tirades and crying jags are
delivered passionately and with complete dedication. I hope she finds herself in
more worthwhile projects in the future.

Closing Statement

Mad Love has much to recommend it. It's visually beautiful and the
skeleton of the story is quite compelling. Unfortunately, Aranda's deeply flawed
conceptualization of story and character knocks down the whole house of cards.
The end result is little more than a crappy soap opera hiding behind unusually
high production values.

I can't recommend it.

The Verdict

Vicente Aranda is found guilty. Handled by a different director, penned by a
better writer, this film may have been an engaging costume drama. That wasn't
meant to be, I guess.